


no sweeter innocence

by nex_et_nox



Category: Batman (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 20:51:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8593255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: He hadn’t meant to get in the way of the blast. He hadn’t meant to shove Bruce away. It had been automatic, instinctual.Foolish.Something Robin would do. Not Red Hood.[Or: Jason's a little more injured. Dick a little less. Gotham isn't that big of a city.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up right after the confrontation with the Fearsome Four in UtRH. Set mostly in the movie verse but with a bunch of stuff from the comics thrown in as well. 
> 
> Might add some more to this AU later, but this has been sitting on my hard drive for months, so...

Jason made it halfway back to his safe house before he gave in and dropped into a nearby alleyway. He couldn’t breathe right; he was pretty sure he had a couple cracked ribs from taking that hit meant for Bruce.

He hadn’t meant to get in the way of the blast. He hadn’t meant to shove Bruce away. It had been automatic, instinctual.

Foolish.

Something Robin would do. Not Red Hood.

At least that asshole member of the Fearsome Four or whatever the hell they were calling themselves was dead. They’d probably have to change their name. Jason laughed a little at the thought, before remembering why that was a bad idea.

Jason should wait until he was back at his safe house before stopping. He was almost positive Batman hadn’t followed him, mostly because B was probably too busy dealing with the clean up from the fight or confirming whatever suspicions he had from the clues that Jason had been dropping like breadcrumbs this whole time, but also because Jason had learned from Batman before he had compounded that with training from the League of Assassins. So he could safely assume he would have noticed Batman following him by now.

It was that faith in his skills that led to him dropping down in this alleyway, pushing at the button to release his helmet and tugging it off with one swift movement. He sat it on the edge of the dumpster he was leaning against, one hand on it and ready to move at any moment. Paranoia was another lesson learned from the Bat.

Usually Jason liked the helmet. It was comfortable enough, it protected him from most airborne toxins, it completely covered his face and didn’t let his expressions give him away—

It made it harder to breathe.

It _shouldn’t_. His air was being cycled back through the filtration and it shouldn’t bother him.

But.

His chest was already tight with pain. Jason couldn’t get in deep enough breaths, and the air in his helmet was dead and still and _stifling._

He knew the signs for his own goddamn panic attacks. He’d been dragging up bad memories since the day he stepped back into this godforsaken city, sharpening the knife-edge of his anger against them, and this hit a little too close to his grave.

_(Scrabbling at the silken ceiling above him, breath coming out in heaving gasps as the air steadily depleted under his own panic, the shower of dirt hitting him when he finally breached the lid of the coffin and he had to dig six feet out of the earth—)_

“You’re in Gotham,” Jason said to himself, very quietly. He rested most of his weight against the dumpster, staring up past the walls of the alleyway to the stars above him. “You’re in Gotham, and you’re alive, standing in some shitty alleyway instead of lying in—”

He broke off, shaking his head. It jostled his ribs and he hissed in a tiny breath at the pain, but it had been enough. Gotham air filled his lungs, the familiar heavy smog and stink of garbage – though that was at least partially because of the dumpster next to him. Fresh air, for a given value of the term.

Home sweet home. It was almost amazing, how Gotham had drawn him back. How welcomed he felt, returning to it. For the city that had killed him and spit out his bones, it still greeted his homecoming with tempered joy.

Or maybe that was just him.

Such a terrible city, but it was _his_.

Jason rubbed his free hand over his face, gloved fingers skirting the edges of the domino he didn’t dare remove outside the shelter of his safe house, and he took another deep breath. As deep of one as he could manage, at any rate.

What a _mistake_. He needed to be ready for when Black Mask made his next move, or when Batman made his. Jason needed to make his _own_ next move.

It was a lot harder to do that with busted up ribs.

Not that this was the worst he had ever powered through—

( _tell the big man I said hello and the door closed and Jason tucked his legs despite the pain and flipped his handcuffed arms so they were in front of him. He couldn’t really walk but goddammit he was getting_ out of here)

—but in this stage of the game every little bit counted. He couldn’t afford even seconds of distraction.

Which meant Jason really shouldn’t be out here right now. He should be back at his safe house, wrapping his ribs and treating the other injuries he’d gotten from being slammed around by the Four, and making sure everything was still on track.

One last breath of filthy Gotham air, then he made to pick up his helmet again.

Except a batarang knocked it out of his hand.

_He can’t have followed me!_

A moment of blind anger and alarm that didn’t keep Jason from suddenly feeling the shift in the air that meant a person behind him, the soft footfalls of a landing that would be too quiet for almost anyone else to have heard, even if they hadn’t been alerted by the batarang.

The batarang that wasn’t a goddamn batarang. The shape was different, a bird instead of a bat, and _fuck,_ Jason had seen these before.

Damn his ribs anyway. Jason _moved_ , ducking around the edge of the dumpster toward the street so he wasn’t closed in and drawing a gun on Nightwing in the same movement. He should have kept moving until he got to his fucking safe house. He never should have stopped in this alleyway.

Nightwing moved at the same time Jason did, escrima sticks out and swinging to knock the drawn gun out of his hand before he could even think to fire, and then Jason was ducking under the other, swearing violently because _fucking Dick_ _Grayson._

Jason needed his helmet back. He could only be thankful that between the shadows of the alley and the domino mask Dick didn’t seem to have figured out who he was other than the Red Hood. Jason would like to keep it that way. His quarrel was with Batman. He’d take it out against Nightwing too if he had to, but at the heart of it, it was all about the father who had failed him, replaced him, and left him unavenged.

“You’re good,” Nightwing said, grinning and eeling around Jason’s punch in the way that had always made Jason wonder if the original Boy Wonder even had a spine. Acrobats, what even.

“Fuck you,” Jason spat back, forgetting that he didn’t have his helmet to modulate his voice and what if Dick recognized him? Then again, Jason’s voice had lowered since the last time the two of them had talked, and who looked for a dead boy in the criminal they were fighting?

Batman, that was who. After several carefully calculated hints, but still.

God, Jason was barely nineteen and he still sometimes felt too old for the bullshit life spat at him.

Jason and Nightwing traded a few more quick blows, Nightwing always staying carefully between Jason and his helmet, the bastard. Jason was debating whether to cut his losses and run – a few strands of hair would only tell Bruce the same thing as the blood he’d left at the scene of his last fight, even if letting the helmet go would expose the explosives in it; if he used smoke bombs against Nightwing he could probably get away – or to try pulling a gun on Nightwing again, when he moved too slow to block Dick’s swing.

The escrima stick caught him in the side, enough force behind it to send him sprawling to the ground, and it hit straight on already damaged ribs. Jason let out a pained cry with breath he could ill afford to lose, and then he hit the ground. All remaining air rushed out of him and he was suffocating, panicking, the movement of Dick and his escrima sticks above Jason for one second flashing to someone decidedly not his brother.

_Get the hell away from me!_

Panic pulled him back to his oldest tricks, the moves he had spent so long perfecting under Batman’s tutelage. They were more effective for an acrobat, for a teenager, not who Jason had grown up to be, but—

They still worked.

He couldn’t tell if it was his heart or the ticking of a clock counting down that thudded in his ears, but he swept his legs out, forcing the man above him to jump back or risk being knocked over, and then Jason flipped himself up, back, and away. He landed lightly on the balls of his feet and slid into a fighting stance, just the way B had taught him, the less flashy version of Dick Grayson’s bouncing enthusiasm, and knew he had given himself away.

Jason was too near the mouth of the alley. A streetlight cut through the Gotham gloom, enough that Jason could make out Dick’s frozen, disbelieving expression. He was uncomfortably aware it must be highlighting his face, too, and even the domino mask couldn’t save him now.

“Jason?” Dick asked. His voice cracked over the word. His grip on his escrima sticks went slack.

Jason didn’t know what the hell to do. He wanted to scream at Dick, to attack him, to run away from him and not look back.

Hurting Daddy’s favorite son would only set back Jason’s own plans. Jason would never be able to confront Batman if he was too concerned about his precious Boy Wonder. Bruce would do anything for Dick; he’d made it abundantly clear he would never do the same for Jason.

“Surprise,” Jason said, mocking, cruel, spreading one hand wide to cover the creeping of the other toward the smoke bombs in his jacket pocket.

Dick took one hesitant step forward, seeming to forget all about any danger he might be in in the Red Hood’s presence, and Jason took that opportunity to throw down the bombs.

“Stay out of my way, Dick,” he called in the moment before they burst. He wished he had his helmet but instead resignedly folded the collar of his jacket over his mouth and nose as he ran to the edge of the smoke cloud and away from his one-time brother.

* * *

Bruce would probably disagree with him if Dick ever said it out loud, but a not-insignificant part of being any type of vigilante or superhero was luck. Bruce would insist on skills, training, back up, always pushing to become better than your previous self – but throwing in dumb luck was never harmful.

Sometimes it was something as simple as coincidence, being in the right place at the right time. (Not a day didn’t go by that for all the grief Dick had gone through with his parents’ death, he couldn’t help but feel some kind of lucky that at least Bruce had been there that night.) It could mean fortuitous circumstances – a criminal stumbled, a gun jammed, dust or sweat blew into an opponent’s eyes – that combined with Batman’s emphasis on training and skill meant the good guys won the day.

It could mean neither Batman nor Nightwing were harmed by the explosion set by Red Hood at the train station other than bruises or a few scrapes from debris.

Dick knew there was some kind of luck in that. Dodging explosions wasn’t a science; every one was different, and close as they were to the bomb when it blew, it was something less than skill on their part that had protected them.

Which was why he was out here now, running patrol in Gotham. Bruce had already tried to send him away, back to Blüdhaven, but Dick dug his heels in. He hadn't been planning on simply leaving Red Hood to Bruce, not when it had just been demonstrated exactly how high-caliber a criminal he was, and especially not now that Bruce was trying to push him away.

There was something that Bruce was piecing together, and he didn't want Dick around while he did it. Perversely, of course, that meant that Dick was all the more determined to stick around. Bruce could be bad about keeping things to himself; Dick wasn't sure what this was about exactly, how it tied into Red Hood, but he wasn't leaving Bruce without backup. Tim was off with the Teen Titans and Cass was out of town, leaving only Dick.

There was a lot of unrest stirred up. Things had barely settled down since the mob wars (since Stephanie Brown's death, and Dick shoved down that familiar pain to near the same place his grief for Jason laid) and now with Red Hood running around and screwing with Black Mask's operations, things were getting shaky again. Add in Black Mask retaliating against Red Hood—

Dick was really hoping things wouldn't erupt between the gangs again. The cost last time had been too high.

He perched on a rooftop, hiding himself in the shadows of a corner and gazing across the street. He took the moment to catch his breath, having just dropped down on two would-be muggers, and fiddled with his comm. It was on, but neither he nor Bruce had contacted each other tonight. Dick was taking Tim's usual patrol route, but he should probably at least check in with Bruce to make sure Batman hadn't decided to waver from _his_ usual route; with all the unrest throughout the city, overlapping their patrols wouldn't be helpful.

He had just pressed against his comm when something on the rooftop across the street caught his eye. A glint of light off red, a figure of about the right build and height stopping for crucial seconds and _not seeing Dick_.

Red Hood was over the edge of the roof, moving down a fire escape to the alley below, and Dick couldn't believe it. He grappled over to the other roof, careful even more so than usual to move as quietly as possible. He was all too aware that this could be a trap, but he couldn't discount the possibility that it wasn't.

Dick peered carefully over the edge of the roof. It was Red Hood, all right. His helmet was off, sitting on the top of a dumpster with Hood's hand protectively on top of it, and all Dick's senses were screaming that this _must_ be a trap, that there was no way Red Hood would have stopped in some random alley and taken off his helmet unless it was a trap.

Except.

Hood was balanced, ready to move, but not in the way that meant he was readying for an attack. It was simply the stance of someone who fought, who was used to having to react at a second's notice. His back was half-turned to Dick, his head tipped back to the stars as he said something to himself that Dick couldn't hear or lip read from his position. For all the world, it looked like Red Hood was simply catching his breath.

 _Ah_ , Dick thought, as Hood shook his head roughly and then flinched in half-concealed pain. _He's not just tired. He's injured._

So now really was the best time, wasn't it?

Nightwing shifted carefully, trying to get in a good position. He needed to act—

_Now!_

Hood was reaching for his helmet; this was the only time Nightwing had seen him take it off, and identifying him was worth the risk of exposing himself early. He anchored a rappelling line and threw a wing-ding in the same motion, sliding down the side of the building and landing gently.

Nightwing darted forward, but Red Hood was already moving, abandoning his helmet to run. No, to pull a gun on him—! Nightwing swung as soon as he registered the shape, then pressing forward to take advantage of Hood's loss of weapon.

Even as he did, he was drinking in the details of Red Hood he could make out in the dim light of the alley. Dark (brown, black?) and slightly curly hair that was paler through the bangs (white? blond? dyed or—?), couldn't see eye color because of the domino mask affixed firmly to his face, no easily visible scars—

"Fuck you!" Hood barked out to Nightwing's easy compliment as they fought, and Nightwing noted, surprised, that the voice was younger than the modulation of the helmet had made it seem.

The helmet that Nightwing was staying in front of, making sure Hood couldn't get it. Evidence from it would be useful, and letting Hood grab it before Nightwing could drive him into some kind of light to better make out defining features would be shameful when Nightwing could have done anything to prevent it.

A flicker of Hood's attention toward the helmet instead of Nightwing's escrima sticks told Nightwing they were thinking along the same kinds of lines, and he pressed ruthless advantage. One stick slammed into Hood's side, just below the newer burn(?) marks splashed across Hood's chest armor.

Hood let out a sound that would have been a scream on anyone else, cut off like he didn't have enough breath, and then he hit the ground. Nightwing prowled closer immediately, ready to reach for restraints while Hood was down—

Hood kicked out. Nightwing leapt backward instinctively, too used to criminals trying to use something of that effect on him, too accustomed to long-ago spars that would almost end up with him flat on his back to the pleased laughter of a tiny boy, and Hood flipped up to his feet and away, settling into an all-too-familiar stance, one that carried all the hallmarks of a Bat's training.

Light cut through the dark, finally showing the face of his opponent in enough detail that, combined with all the other evidence, only presented one logical, impossible conclusion. And Dick had spent over half his life around people in domino masks. He could recognize this face under one.

"Jason?"

White noise filled his mind, and Dick was only just barely cognizant of the confirmation he was given. He took an unsteady step forward, still trying to align all the pieces in his mind and make some kind of sense out of this. Half his brain was devoted to drinking in the details of a face he'd never thought he'd see again, half of it wounded by the sharp edges to a smile that had belonged to an angry child, but never a cruel one. Fierce and raging as Jason could be about the criminals of Gotham, the injustices that they perpetrated, he had always been so joyful.

_What happened to you, Jason?_

Dick was so lost in himself he couldn't react to Jason's parting shot. He should have been able to see him reaching for the smoke bombs, he should have – detained him – or –

Dick backed into the alley, swiping up the helmet and retreating to the roof to get away from the smoke, fumbled rebreather crooked over his mouth.

 _Jason,_ he thought hopelessly, sitting up there for an endless time, mind constantly looping around that. The helmet stared at him accusingly, red like blood, blank like a skull. _Jason._

Finally, achingly, he stood, and started to head back to the manor.

Someone needed to tell Bruce.


End file.
